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This is my 7th Ludum Dare, and I know it’s basically tradition for all of us to complain about themes once they are chosen. However, out of the previous 6 times I’ve participated, I don’t remember the theme seriously HARMING games. Even the entire game on one screen theme probably produced some neat games. Maybe they were small in scope or a little annoying because of the one screen, but normal controls could be used etc.

However, out of 30-something games I played and rated this time (and that’s low by my normal standards), plus my own game, I feel some games were actively HARMED by the two-button theme. I know it’s theoretically optional, but many developers including myself apparently decided that we wanted to use it — or that perhaps we would be judged harshly for ignoring it and using the other theme.

Whatever the reason, many people including me ended up using two controls, and in some cases made neat, clever games THAT WERE REALLY ANNOYING TO PLAY. I thought maybe Morse code would be a clever idea, but the timing was too difficult for the vast majority of players. Even if the two-button mechanic was creative (maybe one does one thing, and one does the other thing, and both does a third thing), it might range from glitchy to frustrating to nearly ruining the player experience.

I may be a minority on this, and I’m sure some games WERE good even with two buttons. But next time you’re voting on a theme, I respectfully ask this: Please consider voting for a theme that relates to content rather than mechanical restriction. I really feel that the player experience will be better because of it.

I normally try not to make post-compo versions, but I learned that this time I made the timing way too difficult in my game. Specifically, the timing between letters for the order combinations is pretty tight. I commented out one line so now the order combinations wait forever. 😛

Of course, it’s not fair that ratings be based on the new version, but I wanted to at least make it more usable if people were interested. It’s kind of sad and funny that sometimes, a single-line change could have improved a game drastically, but with little to no playtesting time in a 48-hour competition, it can be hard to know that ahead of time.

I immediately got the idea of making a two-button game in the style of Game & Watch / Tiger Electronics / RadioShack products. I also decided to use the growing theme.

Like many other people, I wanted to use Morse code, but it turns out that my game is very difficult. I included a hard mode with ALL the letters plus numbers, but currently I don’t think anyone has even beaten the easy version. 😛 I’m still fairly happy with how the presentation turned out. I ran out of time so I didn’t do music, and the gameplay should have been easier, but it was an interesting experiment.

I learned one huge lesson: Gapless MP3 playback is a HUGE pain (whether in Flash or HTML5). In the end I had to use an obnoxious sound buffer method since all other attempts failed. I burned maybe 5 hours on that one thing.

I completed a playable game, but I did not finish the mechanic I wanted to add about player personalities. If the game concept entertains you, I would appreciate an opinion in the comments about the options from the description:

* Option B, DM versus human players.
Focus on making obnoxious surprises for other players in multiplayer, maybe taking turns as the DM.
(The downside of multiplayer is finding other people online to play with, of course)

I made some notes, mostly from the last Ludum Dare, LD31.

With HTML and swfobject.js, there seems to be no way to get initial mouse and
keyboard focus without using wmode = “opaque” or possibly “window”, both of
which apparently have performance problems. If you use wmode = “direct” for
embedding Flash, people will have to click the flash video first for Flixel,
and that click will apparently get ignored. Modifying Flixel might be one way
to fix it. I just worked around it by making the game initially pause so there
is a big arrow that makes it sort of obvious people need to click.

Sometimes FlashDevelop seems to stop detecting compile errors, but when you
run the standalone Flash player, it will freeze without doing anything. In
this situation, if you close the Flash player and restart FlashDevelop, the
next time you compile the error(s) should be properly detected.

The standalone Flash player seems to have a bit of lag playing sound effects.
However, playing the game in FireFox seems to make it better, so don’t panic!

The “0.2” master volume in BFXR seems to work with 22 volume on my computer.
However, BFXR annoyingly seems to reset the master volume with each new sound,
so be very careful if you are wearing headphones.

If I do something silly with a title/menu page like making it a minigame, some
people may like it, but other people may be annoyed by it. My conclusion is
that I should include a skip button or keypress in that case so the people who
get annoyed can jump straight to gameplay.

With HTML and swfobject.js, there seems to be no way to get initial mouse and keyboard focus without using wmode = “opaque” or possibly “window”, both of which apparently have performance problems. If you use wmode = “direct” for embedding Flash, people will have to click the flash video first for Flixel, and that click will apparently get ignored. Modifying Flixel might be one way to fix it. I just worked around it by making the game initially pause so there is a big arrow that makes it sort of obvious people need to click.

Sometimes FlashDevelop seems to stop detecting compile errors, but when you run the standalone Flash player, it will freeze without doing anything. In this situation, if you close the Flash player and restart FlashDevelop, the next time you compile the error(s) should be properly detected.

The standalone Flash player seems to have a bit of lag playing sound effects. However, playing the game in FireFox seems to make it better, so don’t panic! The “0.2” master volume in BFXR seems to work with 22 volume on my computer. However, BFXR annoyingly seems to reset the master volume with each new sound, so be very careful if you are wearing headphones.

If I do something silly with a title/menu page like making it a minigame, some people may like it, but other people may be annoyed by it. My conclusion is that I should include a skip button or keypress in that case so the people who get annoyed can jump straight to gameplay.

I made some notes, mostly from the last Ludum Dare, LD30.

I am posting them in case they happen to help me, or anyone else, this time around!

Make sure your music-creation tool of choice works a few days before the jam. I probably wasted an hour or two getting everything figured out with Music Creator 6 / Sonar X3 last time.

If possible, break your game idea into individual feature sets. This way if you only have time to finish a few features, or one stage of the game, it can still be a complete, though small, game.

Think about whether certain assets can be used in multiple places to save time. Maybe a background, obstacle, or sound effect from one level can be used in another!

I used master volume = 22 on my computer to balance sounds.

To amplify my voiceover recording to a reasonable level, I used 10dB gain in Audacity.

On my system, Sonar X3 will not use the best low-latency settings with the WDM/KS driver mode unless I close other audio applications first. This even includes Firefox. After I launch Sonar X3 I can then relaunch web browers, but I cannot play sound with other applications until quitting Sonar X3.

In Sonar X3, occasionally the sound would get raspy like it is clipping or the latency is too low. Choosing a higher latency may help, but there seems to be a better solution: Pressing play, then stop in the controls at the top seems to usually fix this.

A game that is too easy is probably better than a game that is too hard. People can see a whole game if it is easy enough, and with thousands of games, odds of someone playing all the way through are small otherwise.

For flash games, add some space above the flash object on the HTML page so it is not jammed next to the title bar.